Before creating an online course, identify course goals. You are creating the course for two audiences. The first audience are the students. To create course material that students find compelling, you will need to understand their motivation. The second audience is your company. When companies budget for a training course, they are expecting a clear measurable benefit of providing employees, customers, or business partners with this training course. You should clearly understand the benefit the company is expecting from the course before you develop it.

Defining the Students' Goals:

Defining students' goals helps you to create effective training. The questions you will need to ask are:

• What do you want to accomplish with this course?
• Why does a student want to take the course?
• What does a student's manager get from having their employee take the course?
• Is this course an element of a larger training series?
• When is this class due to be completed?
• How long should a student take to complete the course?

Defining Corporate Goals:

Examples of business goals that should not be used when creating an online course are:

• Create a training course on a (subject name)
• Increasing awareness
• Improving sales
• Reducing costs
• Training employees
• Up-selling customers

Business objectives are specific; they include hard measures: Who did what? When they did it? What percentage changes are expected? What are the items sold and under what conditions are they sold?

Examples of effective goals for a training course are:

• Reduce support center costs by 30% over the next 24 months.
• Up-sell 25% of customers over the next three months
• Decrease defects in product by 20% over the next six months
• Decrease sales and support costs by 25% over the next four years by moving to online applications.
• Increase awareness of our products among employees by 25% by the end of the third quarter.
• Decrease customer support calls by 25% over the next two quarters.
• Increase partner sales by 20% over the next year.

Identify corporate goals for creating an online training course. Make sure they are clear and provide specific enumerated targets.